Leatherheads (PG-13) **½ | Game effort runs into overtime

BY RENE RODRIGUEZ

rrodriguez@MiamiHerald.com

MELINDA SUE GORDOON / UNIVERSAL PICTURES

George Clooney, center, calls the plays in Leatherheads.

• Trailer and movie times

In Leatherheads, director George Clooney proves all the Cary Grant/Clark Gable comparisons right by casting himself in the kind of crowd-pleasing entertainment Grant and Gable made throughout their careers. Essentially a screwball comedy with a sports theme, the movie takes a comic look at the birth of America's pro football league in 1925, when players shared the field with grazing cows and a turnout of 20 people was considered by team owners to be a good day.

As a way of saving the dying league (as well as his paycheck), middle-aged Jimmy ''Dodge'' Connelly (Clooney), captain of the Duluth Bulldogs, recruits popular war hero Carter ''The Bullet'' Rutherford (John Krasinski) to play for his team, hoping Carter will attract the same crowds he currently draws to college ball games.

The ploy works, but it also attracts the attention of newspaper reporter Lexie Littleton (Renée Zellweger), who is working on an exposé revealing Carter's wartime heroics were more luck and circumstance than actual bravery. If Zellweger can't quite muster the brassy charm of Rosalind Russell or Katharine Hepburn, the Front Page subplot does give her and Clooney several scenes of rapid-fire, give-and-take bickering. The plentiful one-liners in the script, written by Duncan Brantley and Sports Illustrated columnist Rick Reilly, don't achieve the memorable wit and instant quotability of golden-age Hollywood, but they come close enough.

Leatherheads alternates between the aforementioned screwball tone and the broader, slapsticky humor of a Three Stooges short. Clooney has obviously been influenced by his frequent directors Joel and Ethan Coen (O Brother Where Art Thou?, Intolerable Cruelty) -- Leatherheads often looks and feels like one of the brothers' shaky comedies -- but even if the movie doesn't always negotiate the changes in tone with grace, it never completely wipes out, either. This is the third film Clooney has directed, after Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Good Night and Good Luck, and the range of the three pictures is indicative of Clooney's refusal to coast on his star power. Leatherheads goes on a good 20 minutes too long, and there's very little in it that makes a lasting impression, but it's easy to watch while it's unspooling -- much like, you know, a lot of Cary Grant comedies.

Cast: George Clooney, Renée Zellweger, John Krasinski, Jonathan Pryce, Peter Gerety, Jack Thompson

Director: George Clooney

Screenwriters: Duncan Brantley, Rick Reilly

Producers: Grant Heslov, Casey Silver

A Universal Pictures release. Running time: 114 minutes. Vulgar language. Playing at area theaters.